8 May 2023 - Charlene - I've Never Been To Me

In 1976, Motown artist Charlene released a single that was widely considered to be a flop.  It reached a whopping #97 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.  

She was subsequently dropped from her label, married an Englishman, and moved to the United Kingdom to work in a sweetshop.  

The single would have been forgotten if not for a little-known DJ named Scott Shannon, at the time on the radio in Tampa, Florida.  His girlfriend loved this song, and in 1982 urged her boyfriend to play it - which he did.  Listeners loved the song, and so Shannon, who used to work for Motown Records, made a few phone calls to his old bosses about the hit potential of the song.  

So, imagie that you've left the music industry, largely feeling like you've failed, only to get a call from the president of Motown Records telling you that you weren't a failure and, indeed, he wanted to resign you to his label.  Charlene doesn't have to imagine, that, because that's what happened to her.  

The second time around, the song was a worldwide hit, hitting #3 in the US and #1 elsewhere.  It was also a crossover hit, with country radio picking up the song as well.   

The song revived her career, and although her time on Motown would only last a few more years. leaving her a one hit wonder in the US (she did have more hits in Europe), she has built a career that still continues to this day, including recording new music as of 2022.  

The song recieved something of a resurgence in 1994, with the release of the Australian movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, which you should go watch right now.  This song was performed by Hugo Weaving as a female impersonator - an audience that truly embraced this song in real life.  

Unusually, Charlene did re-record the song - but only in Spanish.  This ended up being a B-side of a follow-up single, which didn't nearly match the runaway success of "I've Never Benn To Me".

6 May 2023 - The Darling Buds - You've Got To Choose

You had to expect this today.  It's Darling Buds Day.  

Long time readers of this blog will know that this happened accidentally - when we posted Darling Buds songs on two May 6ths in a row.  I hope you, as a new long-time reader, will enjoy this for years to come.   

This song, the FIFTH single from their debut album Pop Said..., is a power-pop masterpiece, with Andrea Lewis (who co-wrote every song on the album with Harley Farr) exercising her vocal chops and eschewing any comparisons to Debbie Harry, Tracy Tracy, and Wendy James.  

5 May 2023 - Ke$ha - We R Who We R

I would have sworn up and down that I did this one already.  I cannot find it.  So, if this is a repeat song, let me know.  

I can tell you we've talked about Kesha Sebert a LOT before, so I won't dive into her background too much.  I can tell you that she was surprisingly amazing when I saw her live.  She's got quite a stage presence and a stunningly strong musical range.  

This song doesn't exactly stretch her range.  It is a synth-heavy dance number about clubbing.  

Except it isn't. Kesha was inspired to write this song in the wake of an uptick in the number of gay teens killing themselves.  In her words to Entertainment Weekly:

I wanted to inspire people to be themselves. It’s a celebration of any sort of quirks or eccentricities.

In a separate interview with Rolling Stone, she elaborated.

I was really affected by the suicides that have been happening, having been subject to very public hatred [myself]. I have absolutely no idea how these kids felt. What I'm going through is nothing compared to what they had to go through. Just know things do get better and you need to celebrate who you are. Every weird thing about you is beautiful and makes life interesting. Hopefully the song really captures that emotion of celebrating who you are ... I just felt like people hate because they don't understand or they're jealous, It's all coming from a very negative place and I really feel like people don't need to pay attention to that.

She wrote a pride anthem and cleverly disguised it as a club banger.   And this song is an absolute banger.  It was also a huge woldwide hit, debuting at #1 in the US and topping charts around the world.  It is arguably her biggest hit and best known song.  

Of course, in the decade since this song came out, Kesha dropped the dollar sign and took a decidedly more rocking turn.  In this live performance from 2021, she's got a full band backing her - and it absolutely rocks.

And she makes it clear that it's still a pride anthem.

I wanted to include this older performance - one that rocks even harder - but also, pay attention to what she says starting at around 3:10 of this video.

I'm sick and tired of bully motherfuckers trying to make us feel like we shouldn't be ourselves all the fucking time. I won't stand and we can't stand for discrimination of any kind - not tonight, not now, not fucking ever. I'm talking about what country you're from, what your skin color is, what your sexual preference is, what your gender identity is, or any other kind of discrimination.  There's no room for that shit here.  There's no room for any more hate in this world.  That's what this song is about.  It's about us celebrating who the fuck we are. And now it's kind of turned into my personal life mission to spread as much love, equality, glitter and rock and roll until the day I die - until I'm six fucking feet underground.  I love you just as you fucking are.  Fuck what anyone else thinks. 

Amen, Kesha.

4 May 2023 - No Doubt - Trapped In A Box

This story starts with an older brother - a keyboardist - recruiting his kid sister to be in his band.

Eric Stefani is featured in this video.  He's the guy playing keyboards.   

Tom Dumont, the guitarist, wrote the beginings of the lyrics for this song as a poem in high school, with Eric writing the melody and other members of the band contributing lyrics.  Eric was the bandleader and prinicpal songwriter.

Their debut album was a commercial failure - a huge flop - so much so that Interscope Records refused to budget money for a video for the only single from the album.... so the band raised $5000 to make their own.  

Unlike their later work, this song - and the whole first album, in fact - was pure ska.  Later work was ska-influenced, but not as pure as this.  In fact, it was differences over that change that led Eric to leave the band, and in fact music altogether - becoming a full-time animator on The Simpsons - leaving primary songwriting duties for the band to his kid sister, Gwen.  

This isn't to say they forgot their roots.  The band still performed this song live for many years.  

And there wasn't really any ill will against the band by Eric - the split was creative, not acrimonious.  

3 May 2023 - Cyndi Grecco - Making Our Dreams Come True

Cyndi Grecco was never a household name.  Her voice, however, was well-known, playing on ABC every week for eight years and for years in syndication afterwards. 

You see, Cyndi Grecco was the vocalist featured on a theme song for a television show called Laverne & Shirley.  A spinoff from Happy Days, it was a midseason replacement show in early 1976, Originally called Laverne Defazio & Shirley Feeney (that title was quickly shortened), the show made stars of Cindy Williams and Penny Marshall.   

And this iconic opening made the theme song immediately recognizable, and brought the terms "schlemiel" and "schlimazel" into the vernacular.  Both are Yiddish terms referring to a chronically unlucky person, and can be best defined with the sentence "the schlemiel spills his soup on the schlimazel."  

Of course, as soon as the show came out and the theme was inserted into the American consciousness, everyone was requesting the song from their local radio stations, and so it was released as a single in 1976.  It became a top 30 hit in the US and Canada.

Despite her flash fame, Cyndi Grecco has not charted again since this song.  Subsequent attempts failed to chart.  Perhaps it's because this song was so earnest and inspiring - and still is.  

2 May 2023 - Gordon Lightfoot - Carefree Highway

I used to say that two celebrity deaths in my lifetime gave me kind of a gut punch - Fred Rogers and Steve Irwin, both for very different reasons I won't discuss here.   

I would have to put Canadian Music Hall of Famer Gordon Lightfoot's passing yesterday close to that as well.  He was arguably the greatest storyteller to ever carry a guitar, a prolifiic songwriter with the husky voice of an angel.  He was absolutelyl brilliant, and I am not exagerationg when I call him a Canadian treasure.  He was the pride of Orillia, Ontario 

The folk music generation has lost their voice with his passing.  Canada has lost a piece of itself with his passing.  His career was long - he performed at a teenager in the 1950. He was there when Bob Dylan (a mentor of his) went electric at the 1965 Newport Jazz Festival.  He was still touring in 2012.  

I had been saving this song for #MapleLeafMarch next year, but is served well at this time.  It was a top 10 hit for Lightfoot in the US and Canada in 1974, and immediately followed "Sundown" as a single release.  The title came to Gord first - he was driving on an Arizona highway (and almost left the title in the glove box of a rental car!), and the rest came months later.  

The beautifully written song is about a man who is driving and remembering a long-past relationship with a woman named Ann - who was real.  Ann was a woman Lightfoot had a relationship with several years before this song - and remembering the time pleasantly, and how she's doing, as you do.  

It remains one of my favorite Gordon Lightfoot songs. 

This version of the song is from a 2012 performance in Reno, Nevada.  Even well into his 70's, he had that audience enraptured.  

Ten years later, in a 2022 performance in Indiana, his voice had lost a little, but his stage presence, well into his 80s, was still there.

28 April 2023 - Lily Allen - Smile

This has been one of the weirdest posting weeks I've ever had.  So I decided to lean in and really get weird.

In 2006, this was Lily Allen's debut single.  On first listen, if you ignore the lyrics, it sounds bubbly and upbeat, but it is decidedly a lyrically angry song - bitter, even.  The song is great, biting, and somewhat humourous.  It ended up being a huge UK hit and a minor hit worldwide.  

That beat you hear is from "Free Soul" by the Soul Brothers.

This is a song that has defined Lily Allen, even if she has grown tired of it at times.  She smartly still performs it live, and does it brilliantly, as she did here in a 2019 performance. 

     

The weird part is that its anger was so polarizing, it sparked a response song, by an artist named Example. He used the same Soul Brothers sample as his background.  It was almost as equally inventive and nearly as bitter.

Wait, did I say that was weird?  No.  That's not weird.

What IS weird is that Lily Allen recorded a second version of the song.  This version of the song is not in English, but in Simlish.  Simlish is the language of the video game The Sims 2, in which Lily Allen was a character.  She found it silly, but also, fun.  It is kind of fun.  But it's also a great way to end what has been a strange blog week.

Next week, we get back to normal stuff.  Maybe.